Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an adapter for receiving an integrated circuit with a Hall sensor. The adapter is used in a system for detecting an electric current.
Brief Description of the Related Art
Sensors for detecting an electric current are already known. For example, the U.S. Pat. No. 6,853,178 B2 (Texas Instruments) discloses a metallic lead frame (connector frame) for use with a semiconductor chip for detecting a magnetic field. The magnetic field is caused by a current in a conductor and the current in the conductor can be computed by a measurement of the field strength of the generated magnetic field. The semiconductor chip of the above US Patent contains an integrated circuit with a Hall sensor which detects the value of the field strength and forwards it to a computing unit for computing the current.
The sensors on a lead frame known so far have different dimensioning and are configured for different current values. The sensors consequently have to be selected separately for each application. The integrated circuit with the Hall sensor, however, is substantially identical and the differences are merely given due to the different dimensioning of the sensor.
There is consequently a demand for developing a sensor that takes on different current ranges/dimensioning and can thus be used cost-effectively.